The trip didn’t start well. We were 400 yards into the 500 mile journey from Oxford to Aberdeen when the phone rang. “We just wanted to check that you’d got the message about the Saturday sailing. It’s very likely to be cancelled”.
Winter sailings between Aberdeen and Shetland are always prone to disruptions. Boats go early. Boats get delayed. Boats get cancelled. Over the years we’ve been very lucky with the sailings – I can only recall two or three occasions when we’ve been messed about – but on a short trip to Shetland it is a bit frustrating to ‘lose’ a day.
The tone of the messages weren’t encouraging, there were question marks over the Sunday night sailing too, but we decided to continue on north and see what turned out.
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| Ythan Estuary, just north of Aberdeen |
Our original sailing was indeed cancelled, and we got to spend a day catching up with relatives around Aberdeen before heading to the harbour on Sunday afternoon to check in. At every stage we were warned that the crossing was going to be a ‘bit bumpy’ – “it should be fine to Orkney, but after that…”.
For those who haven’t braved the Northlink boats – the journey from Aberdeen takes 12 hours by the direct route, and 14 hours if you go via Orkney, and is a really important service for the islands. Even at this time of year, when tourists are thin on the ground, the boats are usually well filled with passengers, cars and freight, and cancellation of a boat means that the next one will be filled to capacity.
As we headed out of Aberdeen harbour on Sunday evening I did feel a touch of sympathy for the many folks sitting around on the chairs and in some cases decks waiting for the weather to worsen. (I should add that although we too were waiting for the weather, we were at least got to do this tucked up in one of the ship's cabins.) We rolled our way across the Moray Firth en route to Orkney, every now and again a big roll felt like a warning of the seas ahead, particularly of the notorious Fair Isle Channel. This 25-mile wide passage between Fair Isle and the rest of Shetland is where the North Sea and the North Atlantic get it together – and they don’t agree on much, even on a still summers day this bit of sea is at very least ‘a bit lumpy’, and during a storm in February…
But somehow the wild weather melted away overnight and we had a smooth journey up past Fair Isle and Sumburgh Head and into Bressay Sound to arrive on Lerwick on a cold sleety Monday morning.
By some fluke of the roulette wheel our arrival on Shetland coincided with the arrival of the longest spell of calm weather that the islands have seen all winter. The winds swung round to come from the Arctic, and then almost faded away complete – ensuring that the island got several days of still cold weather, and on the rare occasions when the skies weren't clear the only precipitation was in the form of snow.
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| Snow on the beach, Quendale Bay |
There is something magical about wandering on sunlit snow-covered beaches, and we made sure that we spent plenty of time doing just that.
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| Braving the elements on Scat Ness |
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| Sumburgh Head in the evening sunshine |
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| Quendale Bay |
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| Shetland sheep don't mind the snow |
And our luck even held for the ferry crossing back to Aberdeen – the crossing was so smooth at times that it was difficult to remember that the boat was still moving. Would that it was always like that at the other times of the year!
There are a few more pictures from this visit on Flickr.
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